Ed arrived in Manchester on a Tuesday in March. The city looked the same. That was the thing that struck him as the train pulled into Piccadilly—the sheer sameness of it, the grey brick and the industrial haze and the particular quality of light that came from a sky that could not decide whether to rain or stay dry. He had not been here since 1952, since the weekend when James had told him he loved him in this very house, in this very bedroom, and the memory of it was so vivid that for a moment...